On Tue, 13 Oct 1998 14:11:54 -0400, "Jerry Morelock"
>Unfortunately, is there anything out there beyond the Papyrus sims using
>Rendition that's really worth buying?
You of course mean Speedy 3D or RRedline.
Quake (orig) and it's fast and certainly better image quality. Quake
2, and in which the Rendition image quality is far better, but
definitely slower, although fast enough. Descent II similarly,
although without question Voodoo was faster but as usual uglier. Just
to name a few big selling titles. Of course, the V2x00 series support
D3D titles, and so Forsaken and many others of it's ilk run as quickly
and graphically indiscernable to Voodoo (orig) using this API.
Glide/Winglide is *now* as dead as Speedy3D/RRedline except for legacy
titles or proprietry company sponsered deals like the EA association.
DirectX 6.0 improvements in D3D and general performance improvements
in hardware across the spectrum have seen to that, along with Open GL
wrappers for other games. So the argument is moot apart from as a
rather juvenile frame rate pissin' contest for the intellectually
challenged.
Pretty much all the engines will give acceptable frame rates today.
It's really a matter of how much you are sucked in by hyped up
advertising, affected by peer pressure to "keep up with the Jones's"
mentality and how much you want to spend.
You should take off those 3Dfx shades so you can see more clearly. 8^P
3Dfx make a fine product, but far from perfect. It's singular claim to
fame is speed over image quality, at an OVER-INFLATED price. I'm
thankful for the opposition and the evolution in terms of performance
and features of non-proprietry APIs which benefits everyone.
For the record I have Rendition V1000 (intergraph Reactor), V2100
(Diamond Stealth II S220), nVidia Riva 128 (Diamond Viper V330 AGP)
and 3Dfx Voodoo (Diamond Monster 3D) all only 4MB cards (Stealth &
Viper SGRAM, Reactor and Monster EDO), however the nVidia AGP has
128MB of PC-10 to access via a 128MB aperture on the 66MHz AGP bus.
I appreciate the strengths and weakness of them all. Certainly I'd
like a 16MB TNT or 24MB SLI Voodoo II combo, but the price here is
nothing short of irrational. IMO one would have to be either
certifiablely insane, or financially irresponsible to pay the current
asking. 8^)
I'm also interested in seeing what Micron backed Rendition will
deliver in their forthcoming next generation. Whilst I don't expect
them to live up to their promises (like every one else), the specs
certainly sound ambitious. Even if they achieve only 85% of their
specs, it'll be one hell of a D3D and OGL performer.